Month: August 2010

An exciting announcement out of Britain: The â€œWorldâ€™s First Red-fleshed Appleâ€, the Redlove Era, developed in Switzerland, will be available in markets in a year or so. The red color extends from the flesh into the apple to the core. Something new? Not!

Itâ€™s about time the red-fleshed apples hit the supermarket. Notice I said â€œapplesâ€ with an â€œsâ€. The Redlove is NOT the worldâ€™s first red-fleshed apple. Apple growers in the US, Canada and New Zealand have known about the red-fleshed and pink-fleshed apples for a long time. And there are many varieties. I know of a grower who has around 75 cultivars of these unusual apples.

Even in my small backyard orchard, there are five different red-fleshed apple trees and two pink-fleshed ones â€“ all but one are good eating. The remaining one is an edible but fairly tart crabapple. Four of the red apples are red-skinned and one looks deceptively like an ordinary yellow-green apple until you bite into it and discover that it is red inside. Both pink-fleshed apples hide under a similar yellow-green exterior. All these apples are of American or Canadian origin, except the Niedzwetzkyana, which comes from Kazakhstan, the place where apples originated.

The Redlove is therefore not the worldâ€™s first red-fleshed apple. It will only be the first supermarket one.